TGS 2014 – Bravely Second is More of the Same, But That's Okay (Preview)

Bravely Default finally saw an English release at the start of this year and proved to be a pretty strong JRPG title for the Nintendo 3DS. So when Square Enix announced that Bravely Second would get a playable demo at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, naturally I was pretty excited to see how the sequel would shape up.

The Bravely Second demo switched things up by giving us a whole new cast of characters and jobs to spend time with. One of the new jobs introduced in the sequel is the Wizard class and I got a quick look at it with Nicolai, one of the new party members in the game. The Wizard is given the ability to match his magic spells with a type of attack. For example, I can choose the ‘fire’ spell and match it with another attack such as ‘mist’ or ‘darts’.

The ‘mist’ attack doesn’t deal damage right away; instead, enemies will take damage each time they make a move. While ‘mist’ deals slow damage over time, the ‘darts’ attack takes priority over all other attacks. This means that you’ll have the chance to deal damage to your opponents before anyone else gets to make a move. The variety of attacks that the Wizard has is pretty useful and it looks like it might come in very handily when you face tougher foes.

I got the chance to explore a forest-type dungeon in the demo where the party was tasked with looking for a missing child. It’s worth noting that although there was only one map area in the dungeon, it was rather large and definitely much more labyrinthian than most of the ones we’ve seen in Bravely Default. There were many winding paths leading to loot and dead ends, as well as paths looping over one another.

The demo ended with a boss battle against a new character, Amy, who held an asterisk for the Tomahawk class, another job newly introduced in Bravely Second. Though Amy herself was not a playable character, it was easy to see that the Tomahawk class acts primarily as a gun-wielder with various support abilities at her disposal.

Combat will be familiar to anyone who’s played Bravely Default. At the start of each turn, your characters will have the choice to either ‘brave’ or ‘default’. Choosing ‘brave’ will allow your character to attack multiple times in succession, but at the cost of a few future turns. On the other hand, choosing ‘default’ will have your character defend while saving up turns to be used in succession later on in the battle.

With its trademark watercolor visuals, Bravely Second looks just as charming as its predecessor did. While the game doesn’t seem to have changed much in terms of gameplay, apart from introducing some new classes, it’s a title that fans of the first game will surely enjoy.

Bravely Second is set to release this winter in Japan on the Nintendo 3DS. A localized version has yet to be announced, though considering the success Bravely Default has had in the west, it is very likely that Square Enix will bring it over sooner rather than later.